Dear Ms. Sinclaire’s first grade class: This is for you.

Almost daily, we get e-mails from teachers and parents sharing the great stuff happening at their schools. And to be sure, there are amazing programs, events and achievements occurring in schools across the Bay Area all the time.

We just can’t write about all of them.

But every now and then one hits the inbox and there’s just something about it, something bigger, something special that tugs at us.

Shhhh. Students reading.

“I am writing,” Leila Sinclaire wrote, “on behalf of the 21 first graders in my classroom at Black Pine Circle School per their request to tell you that we reached a goal of reading without distraction for 50 minutes and 39 seconds.”

First of all, that this was “per the request” of 21 first graders is awesome. More amazing: 21 first graders knew that there was such a thing as newspaper reporters. But then the note got even better.
“When we began timing ourselves at the start of the school year,” Ms. Sinclaire said. “we could only read for 1 minute and 16 seconds without chatting.”

In other words, the students at the Berkeley private school increased their undivided silent-reading attention span by 49 minutes and 23 seconds since they started school in the fall. That’s a lot. We were very impressed.

Then the kicker:

“When we hosted the school principal and class parents to read alongside us in a Read-a-Thon recently,” Ms. Sinclaire continued, “they struggled more than the students to resist checking their email, daydreaming, leaving the room, etc.!”

That a group of first graders was able to focus more than their adult counterparts was amazing and amusing, to be sure, but kind of sad too. It offers a cautionary tale of technology and the lessons we might be teaching our children about what’s important and urgent.

But on the upside, there is Ms. Sinclaire, teaching 21 first graders the joy of snuggling up with a book and becoming so immersed in a literary world that they are not inclined to pull a pigtail or make a fake burping sound for more than 50 minutes.

“This group of readers is truly extraordinary,” their teacher concluded in the note.